Override
by Zana Banana
Summary: You no longer belong to yourself, and you dissolve.


**Override**

Green. Red. Green.

Jin Kazama's spoken command travels through your ears, drips along the back of your throat, shoots directly down your spine, and arrives at your central system within seconds.

Although his words register correctly, you find yourself withdrawing from them. You are aware of what will happen if you obey, just as much as you are that you have no choice in the matter.

You resolve to fight against it for as long as possible.

You engage in an inward struggle against the part of you that has been lying dormant since your awakening. In such a short time abroad, you have already come so far from what you'd been created to be.

Alas, you are a victim of your own body.

Red. Green. Red.

You detect a rapid flux in Lars' heart rate. Though your legs have succumbed to mechanical numbness, you still have control over your upper body and use it to look at him. His facial expression has morphed, but you cannot directly connect the widened state of his eyes or parted lips to a representative emotion in your database.

Oh, if only you could stay a little longer, could continue to be with him, the things you would learn!

Red. Red. Green.

You believe your father to be an honorable man, but you very much dislike that you are not completely human.

As much chaos as there was in the small pocket of the world you explored alongside Lars, you are intrigued by the fragile human race and admire their ability to choose their own actions. Perhaps if you were capable of such a feat, you could disagree with the command to harm him.

Alas, you are barely human at all.

Red. Red. Red.

Then there is darkness. You see nothing, hear nothing. You no longer belong to yourself, and you dissolve.

Immeasurable time slinks by. Gradually, the blackness surrounding you starts to ebb in the wake of shimmering gold. The gentle heartbeat of the earth reaches you, the sound of a shifting mass infinitely larger than your reality. Lighter now, lighter still, and suddenly you can see again.

Ancient ruins and stone beasts come into focus. The gargoyles unleash silent roars from precarious perches, baring jagged fangs to the roving universe above, a stretch of pure cerulean.

You sense that you are not alone, and quickly discover another expanse of blue you could easily dive into.

Lars is kneeling down beside you and observing your face in a rather pensive manner. His sandy hair quivers in an abrupt breeze and divulges a feature you observed once before, when the two of you met.

You remember studying him, then just a stranger standing before you.

He was quite obviously in peak physical shape, although the majority of his body was concealed by a Tekken Force uniform. The lines of his countenance were well-defined, his chin sharp. You'd immediately gathered that he was visually appealing.

The pale bolt marring his left brow deterred this thought, but only because it fascinated you in a way you could not explain. You inferred that a deep wound founded long ago had slowly folded itself over into a cocoon of scar tissue. You hadn't known what to make of the information, however, for you yourself bore no such markings.

There had been a sudden crash behind him. A pair of glowing dots flickered to life. An android lurched forward, converging on the human.

There was no indication of which was your ally, which the enemy.

You knew nothing of this man's intentions. You couldn't see anything beyond his biological readings—the temperature radiating from his skin, his heartbeats per minute, his exterior.

Yet he possessed a rare variable—something intangible that could not be analyzed—in his eyes, the crystalline orbs that had held your own while you introduced yourself as if he, too, were trying to identify the mysterious element held intact by your ocular connection.

You were not at all threatened by his presence.

Your encounter with the drone hadn't lasted long. It was arduous, though, and you resorted to calling forth the twin chainsaws embedded into your arms. Your innate weapons buzzed and slashed into the torso of the figure. Its innards, slender, vibrant wires encased in silver, sputtered from the areas of impact.

You did not know why you chose to side with the human. You could only recall a nagging, yet voluntary, urge to protect him from the intruder.

Occupied by your thoughts, you had been caught off-guard when the form rose, undefeated, and prepared to attack. Automation warned you to retreat. You scrambled back as your assailant raised its arms above its head.

In a mere moment you had processed all incoming data and extrapolated several possible outcomes of the assault, as well as corresponding defensive maneuvers. Yet the large metal fists never reached you. Instead, you watched in silence as the human male apprehended the droid and destroyed its circuits.

In a swift, gentle motion, he offered you his hand. It did not initiate a command sequence, and you would be disobeying your father's instructions, but you knew you would comply and go with him.

Because you _wanted_ to.

Green. Green. Green.

Yes, you had willingly followed a stranger into another world, one choking on a haze of mystery, violence, treachery, and weakness.

And it was wondrous.

You don't understand some of your past judgments. They do not comply with your statistics. You must have acted on something else, an underlying emotional intuition or bond.

Just for a minute or two, because to be governed solely by feelings is almost as dangerous as lacking them entirely. Thus your mainframe always intervened, weighing down your senses with numbers and images, and once more you were reminded of the blades beneath your skin.

Now, however, you have an inexplicable desire to seek physical contact, the same kind he gave you before. You lift a feeble hand to his looming figure. His temperature rises as he reacts. You cannot verify the reason for this.

Your fingertips brush, and you smile in spite of the shadows once again raking their claws across your consciousness.

You fleetingly wonder if there will ever come a time when you can override the internal program, a time when you are exclusively in control.

A time when you truly become what the cells cultivated for your body had once been.

Alive.


End file.
